Down I was a-cycling and up a bird was a-gliding.
A grand sky was of dancing cue tips, touches white and gray. It fell from the monochrome huddle, a bird, flapping its feathery frame, arching in profile-wise, growing in my field of sight. Expanding dot. Dastardly it was that my own frame, be-cycled and pedaling, coast-sweeping romantically, did likewise for the growing bird––who knows? Be that however it will, there we were: dots growing for each other. I wondered why it was coming so close, and it approached me unabashed. I whistled at my fortune.
At such moments one tends to pedal cautiously, to let up on the heedful ankles. For it was that my cycle was moving fast––not a breakneck speed, but neither a slow and imaginative one, it was a speed that was merely of note; and this speed that I was committing was causing remarkable droplets to rise up from beneath the rubber tires for whoever might have seen this, droplets that generously misted themselves away in the afternoon stench of sea air, little martyrs in the air of dogs and discarded clothing. Close enough at that point for a proper peak, the bird came confidently close, I thought that its birdy beak looked sea-salty (––had it just had a fish? Good bird!), but no, that couldn’t have been so––and then closer it came, upon me.
“Bird, I am no fish!”
I cycled faster, feeling its red eye glare upon me.
“Shall I whack it? Thump it a birdy bash?”
Boom. Boom. My heart swelled, quickly cowered, then my hands clasped for the breaks: but to stop – at this juncture, on this rainwater, in this uncalled for way (Alas! What shall the joggers-by think of me?) – I could not! And so I released the steel breakers – for that was all I could have done, or rather, un-done (were it that I weren’t a coward) – and to the exigencies of experience I flung myself closed-eyed and in dread of the asphalt beneath my soon-to-be-cracked teeth.
But none of this happened. Still a-cycling on my way, the way, straight and determined, I spoke my praises to the Keeper of All above: kissykiss. For my teeth sat in place – some crooked others simply not straight – and the asphalt spread quiet and still beneath my trustily spinning tires––and what tires, gripping the Earth as it spins fast as they say it does in the classrooms! And, thanks to the Keeper, I opened my eyes close enough to a tree to just swerve past it. Kissykiss.
What? Who? Did I pick up a squirrel? No matter, get in! What are baskets for, Mr. Tree-Squirrel? Eyes open and in balance, I set out to mentally collecting myself, assessing my options and circumstances, perhaps the squirrel had some input, but he made nothing of it. Be that however it will, it was only a matter of time before I noticed. For how could I not have noticed! There was a rather largish obstruction in the path of my sight. As I whizzed along the coastline, it was so that a biggish thing that seemed to be wearing a hat was upon me! What is it, blinding thing? Pesky. A friend of the squirrel, perchance? For it had its back turned to me, rude thing. I ventured a poke.
“Hello sir––or thing, what be ye? And what … oh!”
It was none other than the sky-departing bird now perched augustly astride the handlebars. I smelt a fish on its beak-lips and blackish tongue. It wore a crownish sort of hat, yes it did; but it kept it on quite authoritatively despite having entered the space of my cycle––for it is that I often sleep here. Be that however it will, its hefty demeanor quickened my pedaling, pumped air into my lungs. Huff-a-puff, a-go!
“Pedal quick, lousy cad!” It squawked or talked, I couldn’t have been sure as my knees were moving quite erratically. ––But what was this? Did the good bird speak?
“I did!” Astonishing! How did it know that I had that question? For I had not spoken. Then it spoke again.
“You are what is called ‘bird-brained’, be ye not?”
“It has been said,” I spoke over the heaving my breath.
“Well, I am a bird.” This reasoning smashed my universe into pieces.
It was fiendishly simple, for what else could read a birdbrain but a bird? Such are the natural quirks of the cosmos. For example, how great it is that on a cycle one can move twice, three-times, or even four-times, the speed that one’s own two feet can carry them––but its all thanks to the two feet! Astonishing! I pondered that one many a week, but it wasn’t the sort of thing to be put in a pipe and smoked, so I eventually let go of that one––grudgingly; but this, this bird reading my brain, its brain reading my bird-brain, what a flap! Be that however it will, I was a fan of the fiendish and of the simple, and so a fan too of this bird, naturally. Perhaps I still am, who would know? For as soon as I began to muster the courage for more questions, mental or otherwise, it flapped a flap and lifted off into the windy sky.
idiotic investigations 